(Press-News.org) Non-tenure-track academics experience stress, anxiety, and depression due to their insecure job situation, according to the first survey of its kind published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Psychology.
There were 1.4 contingent faculty workers in the USA, according to a report by the American Association of University Professors. These faculty members, such as research adjunct faculty, lecturers and instructors, are off the so-called "tenure track". They work under short-term contracts with limited health and retirement benefits, often part-time and at different institutes simultaneously. Among them, women, African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans are overrepresented.
Gretchen Reevy from California State University and Grace Deason from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, USA, used extensive self-report questionnaires to survey almost 200 non-tenure-track academics – mainly from medium-sized universities in the USA, and of whom around two-thirds were women. Questions focused on work-related sources of stress, mental wellbeing, and coping mechanisms, as well as about their background, family situation, and income.
Almost one-third of the participants (31%) replied that the lack of job security was among the most stressful aspects of their work. Other frequently named sources of stress were a high workload; lack of support and recognition; low and unequal pay; and feeling excluded from the infrastructure and governance at their institute .
Non-tenure track faculty who wished for a permanent position, or whose family income was low, were more prone to depression, anxiety, and stress. They were also more likely to suffer from these if they felt personally committed to the institution where they worked. On average, women reported encountering more sources of stress at work than men.
The authors call on universities to attend more to the specific needs of their non-tenure-track faculty to avoid negative outcomes for institutions, students, and faculty. Suggestions include alleviating the sources of stress listed above and considering increasing the rate of hiring into more secure, tenure-track positions.
INFORMATION:
The full paper is available at: http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00701/abstract
Journal: Frontiers in Psychology
Title: Predictors of depression, stress, and anxiety among non-tenure track faculty
Authors: Gretchen M. Reevy and Grace Deason
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00701
Contacts
Gozde Zorlu
Communications Manager
Frontiers
gozde.zorlu@frontiersin.org
Grace Deason
Assistant Professor of Psychology
University of Wisconsin - La Crosse
gdeason@uwlax.edu
Gretchen Reevy
Lecturer
Department of Psychology
California State University, East Bay
gretchen.reevy@csueastbay.edu
About Frontiers
Frontiers is a community-driven open-access publisher and research networking platform. Established by scientists in 2007, Frontiers empowers researchers to advance the way science is peer-reviewed, evaluated, published, communicated, and shared in the digital era. Frontiers drives innovations in peer-review, article level metrics, post publication review, democratic evaluation, research networking and a growing ecosystem of open-science tools. Frontiers joined the Nature Publishing Group family in 2013. The "Frontiers in" journal series has published 20,000 peer-reviewed articles across 45 journals, which receive 6 million monthly views, and are supported by over 140,000 editors, reviewers and authors worldwide. For more information, visit: http://www.frontiersin.org
Job insecurity in academia harms the mental wellbeing of non-tenure track faculty
2014-08-06
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Preparing for a changing climate: Ecologists unwrap the science in the National Climate Change Assessment
2014-08-06
Two Ignite sessions focusing on findings in the United States National Climate Assesment5 (NCA) will take place on Monday, August 11th during the Ecological Society of America's 99th Annual Meeting, held this year in Sacramento, California.
The first session, Ignite 1: From Plains to Oceans to Islands: Regional Findings from the Third National Climate Assessment will highlight major findings from the report about the regional effects of climate change, discuss impacts to the ecosystems of the region, and explore how changes in those ecosystems can moderate or exacerbate ...
Triangulum galaxy snapped by VST
2014-08-06
Messier 33, otherwise known as NGC 598, is located about three million light-years away in the small northern constellation of Triangulum (The Triangle). Often known as the Triangulum Galaxy it was observed by the French comet hunter Charles Messier in August 1764, who listed it as number 33 in his famous list of prominent nebulae and star clusters. However, he was not the first to record the spiral galaxy; it was probably first documented by the Sicilian astronomer Giovanni Battista Hodierna around 100 years earlier.
Although the Triangulum Galaxy lies in the northern ...
Study: Many cancer survivors smoke years after diagnosis
2014-08-06
ATLANTA – August 6, 2014–Nearly one in ten cancer survivors reports smoking many years after a diagnosis, according to a new study by American Cancer Society researchers. Further, among ten cancer sites included in the analysis, the highest rates of smoking were in bladder and lung cancers, two sites strongly associated with smoking. The study appears early online in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.
Cigarette smoking decreases the effectiveness of cancer treatments, increases the probability of recurrence, and reduces survival time. Nonetheless, some studies ...
Nearly 10 percent of patients with cancer still smoke
2014-08-06
PHILADELPHIA — Nine years after diagnosis, 9.3 percent of U.S. cancer survivors were current smokers and 83 percent of these individuals were daily smokers who averaged 14.7 cigarettes per day, according to a report in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR).
"We need to follow up with cancer survivors long after their diagnoses to see whether they are still smoking and offer appropriate counseling, interventions, and possible medications to help them quit," said Lee Westmaas, PhD, director of tobacco ...
Healthy diet set early in life
2014-08-06
Promoting a healthy diet from infancy is important to prevent childhood obesity and the onset of chronic disease.
This is the finding from a study published in the latest issue of Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health.
Led by Rebecca Byrne from QUT, the study described quantity and diversity of food and drinks consumed by children aged 12-16 months.
"The toddler years are a critical age in the development of long-term food preferences, but this is also the age that autonomy, independence and food fussiness begins," Ms Byrne said.
"Childhood obesity in ...
Nutrition an issue for Indigenous Australians
2014-08-06
Nutrition has not been given enough priority in national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health policy in recent years.
This is the finding from a study published in the latest issue of Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health.
Led by Jennifer Browne from La Trobe University, the study examined Aboriginal-specific health policies and strategies developed between 2000 and 2012.
"Increased inclusion of nutrition in Aboriginal health policy was identified during the first half of this period, but less during the second where a much greater emphasis was ...
Crime Victims' Institute tracks the state of stalking in Texas
2014-08-06
HUNTVILLE (8/6/14) -- According to a 2010 survey by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an estimated 1.4 million women in Texas experience stalking during their lifetimes. Despite recent laws adopted in the state to protect stalking victims, little information is available about the crime or policies and procedures to aid the criminal justice system, according to a report from the Crime Victims' Institute (CVI).
According to CDC estimates, 15.6 percent of the female population in Texas will experience stalking, slightly less than the 16.2 percent national ...
Vanderbilt finding may aid recovery from spinal cord injury
2014-08-05
Researchers in the Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science (VUIIS) have achieved the first conclusive non-invasive measurement of neural signaling in the spinal cords of healthy human volunteers.
Their technique, described today in the journal eLife, may aid efforts to help patients recover from spinal cord injuries and other disorders affecting spinal cord function, including multiple sclerosis.
"We definitely hope that this work can be translated to address many neurological disorders," said the paper's first author, Robert Barry, Ph.D., a postdoctoral ...
Researchers boost insect aggression by altering brain metabolism
2014-08-05
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Scientists report they can crank up insect aggression simply by interfering with a basic metabolic pathway in the insect brain. Their study, of fruit flies and honey bees, shows a direct, causal link between brain metabolism (how the brain generates the energy it needs to function) and aggression.
The team reports its findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The new research follows up on previous work from the laboratory of University of Illinois entomology professor and Institute for Genomic Biology director Gene Robinson, ...
This week from AGU: Sea-level spikes, volcanic risk, volcanos cause drought
2014-08-05
From AGU's blogs: Sea-level spikes can harm beaches worse than hurricane
Unforeseen, short-term increases in sea level caused by strong winds, pressure changes and fluctuating ocean currents can cause more damage to beaches on the East Coast over the course of a year than a powerful hurricane making landfall, according to a new study. The new research suggests that these sea-level anomalies could be more of a threat to coastal homes and businesses than previously thought, and could become higher and more frequent as a result of climate change, according to a new study ...